An e-mail is used increasingly as a way of reaching several people at once. This happens both in formal and informal contexts. In corporate environments and organizations e-mail distribution lists are widely used to help users to easily reach the same predefined group if needed. The lists, however, are often managed by a third party and the creation of them is not possible for the e-mail end-user, especially on an ad-hoc basis.
Even being very efficient, the e-mail has its limitations when many people need to discuss or agree on a subject. Sometimes it is more practical to establish an interactive communication, e.g., using a teleconference, an on-line chat session or a face-to-face meeting. There is a need for a simple way to contact the sender and all receivers of an e-mail message, e.g., by establishing a conference call with them.
It is often necessary to repeatedly send e-mail messages and communicate with the same group of people. It is impractical and time-consuming to go and check the names or addresses of relevant people from an old e-mail message. Thus, there is a need for both the sender and all receivers of an e-mail message to be able to create an address group for later usage, containing details of the sender and all the recipients.
E-mail applications in PCs (personal computers), PDAs (personal digital assistants), mobile phones, etc. do not allow the establishment of another type of a group communication session from within the e-mail message, though calling to a single person (user) is possible in many implementations (e.g., an MS Outlook). As well-known, the PCs, PDAs, mobile phones, etc. have capabilities for storing phone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc. However, none of these devices can create a group of contacts based on the e-mail message.